


Praised be the Doubters, Who Do Not Kneel

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Original Work
Genre: Atheism, Catholic Guilt, Christianity, Christmas, Gen, Poetry, Religious Conflict, Religious Themes, Roman Catholicism, agnosticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5532890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Good Women and Men of Faith, worry not! pray not! doubt not!<br/>This unfaithful stands in a sea of believers. My legs shake. I have no rod -- I am no sheep!</em>
</p><p>Christmas Mass, as depicted by someone who used to pray every night before going to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Praised be the Doubters, Who Do Not Kneel

Where did it's go?

I used to stay awake until midnight, chat with everyone and speak my mind

trust in Magi and the Father, Gabriel's golden halo.

Where did it go? I had to bit my tongue not to answer Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Do they think unfaithfulness comes cheaply, easily to me? I was born and bread to sing Latin hymns.

Do they think I do not mind, that I do not notice? Perhaps a I am too sharply dim. It's easy to spot the holes, the frayed threads, harder to roll your sleeves and laugh along.

I will not laugh, I will not break the spell. A complicit to the crime-leaft handed Lilith--

did they notice me, unbent in a sea of believers? Do they care how dearly I love the smells, melting wax and silver incense?--

No. No. They see and notice, they watch and mock, they sing and eat. They understand, maybe, but it is not for them to understand.

How can they speak the words like they mean it? How can they mean it?

 

God is my Shepard, my Rod, Father-Friend-Judge.  
God is trying to stand like a statue in mass and failing.  
God is the holes in my family that I have never fit in.  
God is the simmering resentment for your own blood. God-Good-Grief.

God is rage. Did the Apostles forget that? I rage at God, at the promises  
unfulfilled.  
_Mea Culpa? Tea Culpa!_ There is life and there is death,  
nothing  
between.  
Is that it? Is there nothing more? I cannot believe there is.  
It kills me to think there isn't.

Today the Father asked the good (wealthy, gold-buttoned, soft handed) parishioners to pray for the souls of those lost to God's Light. Good Women and Men of Faith, worry not! pray not! doubt not!

This unfaithful stands in a sea of believers. My legs shake. I have no rod -- I am no sheep!  
Do not worry --I have a hat, my mother's gloves. A new book in my pocket.

My legs shake, my tongue twits. I do not kneel.

Where did it go? Where this things usually go. Recycled faith, maybe,

prayer chantes at night for another child, another tongue, another pantheon

 

This is what is left: the steel in my spine, the iron in my jaw,  
high strung truths laid bare with no finesse,  
black stocking itching a little less every year. skin that grows, shedd a little more each year.

 

When you smash an alter, you make another of your bones.

You want candles? Here's you fat. Burn yourself into a prayer.

You want sacrifice, duty, gospel? Be a martyr, be a saint, be a sinner and a singer, 

a truth-speaker, a truth-is-subjective-prescious-mortal-person,

be a religion. be a prayer. be a worshipper ---be a writer

write with deeds, write with words, write the gospel of your own kingdom come

 

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

 

Be Gloria. Praise yourself. Worship Life. Do not kneel. Kneel, only if you mean it. Stand. Cry. Scream.

Live. That is worship enough. 

 

 


End file.
